zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

: I disagree. While quartz are more PRECISE, they
: are not necesarily more ACCURATE.

: Consider a quartz watch that runs at a
: consistent and precise -1.0 seconds per day.
: After one month of running, I know for
: certain that it will be 30 seconds off. This
: is because the deviation of a quartz
: movement are precise too, so the errors are
: always in the same direction and accumulate
: over time.

: But a Chronometer grade automatic will vary in
: its performance. While it may run at a much
: less consistent and precise -4 to +6 seconds
: per day in normal use, at the end of the
: month much of that variation will cancel
: itself out and the watch may still be no
: more than 30 seconds off.

: This tested out in a 12 month competition I had
: between my Breitling Aerospace and Seamaster
: Pro. At the end of the 12 months, the quartz
: Aerospace was off from correct time by MORE
: than the auto Seamaster was.

: Where the quartz lost was the accumulation of
: the consistent deviation over time. Even a
: quartz watch running at the COSC Quartz
: Chronometer limit of 0.2 seconds per day
: will be off by almost 1 1/4 minutes at the
: end of a year.

: My Breitling, running a consistent -0.6 seconds
: per day was off by over 3 1/2 minutes at the
: end of the year.

: Sure, the Seamaster varies more during the
: year, but the net effect was partially
: canceled since the variation was positive
: part of the time, negative the rest. At the
: end of the year, it was off by only 2
: minutes.

: So for me, the quartz was less accurate!

This is a good point well-made, but for balance one whould say that an automatic watche will usually require further intervention (periodic servicing/adjustment) over its lifetime to maintain this kind of performance. We have an old sixties auto Omega in the family which is well-overdue for a service, it's losing minutes every day!

Quartz watches on the other hand either work or they don't. It would be very unusual to see this type of degredation of performance in the quartz SMP.